Kittenish

Yes, I've been gone again. I hope to catch up with everyone's blogs soon. (Well, not EVERYone's. But yours. Certainly.)

But look! I brought show and tell!

Meet Tamarin. Yep, a few minutes after this picture was taken, she came home with me. She was 9 weeks old at the time, two weeks ago.

See, a co-worker (M.) had started feeding this skinny stray cat, who turned up pregnant. M. took her to the vet, who confirmed that kitty was a) probably only about a year old, if that; b) terribly malnourished; c) FeLV and FIV negative, and d) pregnant. (We think she was probably adopted by a student last fall when she was a cute kitten and then abandoned in May.) M. took her in, over the objections of her existing two cats, and kitty proceeded to pop out TEN kittens. One of them only made it a couple of weeks, but between mama cat's nursing and M.'s bottle feeding, nine of them were healthy and happy and eventually ready to be adopted.

I went over when they were 8 weeks old - you know, because who can resist a "come over and play with a bunch of kittens!" invitation? Truth be told, I'd resisted that invitation for a few weeks, because I knew it would be hard to resist bringing one home. By the time I visited, most of them were spoken for, so it felt a little safer.

These were, as it turns out, about the healthiest and best-socialized little kittens I had ever seen. They had the dual advantage of being nursed by a very good mamacat AND being bottle-fed and hand-raised by a very good foster-human, so they had that fearless, "of course everybody is my friend" confidence that some kittens have. When they ventured out into the living room where M.'s older cats were still seriously p.o.'d about their home being invaded by the little beasties, the kittens just blinked and went about their business. I knew one of 'em could definitely hold its own with my two ginormous bigcats.

Normally when you bring home a new cat it takes a few days, at least, for the existing cats to adapt and get over it. So it didn't alarm me when Bear and Lotus did some hissing the first night and into the next day. But 24 hours after bringing her home, Lotus and Tamarin (she's named after a type of small adorable monkey, which suits her) started negotiating the rules of play and were playing tag and hide-and-seek and Kittianapolis 500 in short order. Bear doesn't spend as much time rocketing around the house with her as Lotus does, but he's quite pleased with her as well, and will sit there patiently while she pounces on his plumey tail over and over and over.

Bear and Lotus are so good with her:

And me? I'm smitten. How could I not be?

So that's what I've been up to. I have some new (completely non-kitten-related) poem drafts, too, and maybe I'll post one here in the next day or two (leaving it up for 24 hours or so - so keep an eye out if you're interested).